Winter 2006–2007

Colors / Violet

Your name is a color

Daniel Handler

“Colors” is a column in which a writer responds to a specific color assigned by the editors of Cabinet.


Upon receiving this publication’s instructions to write on the color violet, I had just completed the thirteenth and final volume of “A Series Of Unfortunate Events,” a sequence of novels chronicling the lives of three hapless orphans, one of whom is named Violet. Accordingly, I decided to spend a bit of time with another young girl named Violet. This Violet is the daughter of prominent Kansas City booksellers. I’ve always liked her, but as with people I like who live in Kansas City, I never got to talk to her much. Via regular mail, I was able to ask her a great number of questions, selections from which are reprinted here.

Daniel Handler is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Adverbs, and serves as the legal, literary, and social representative of Lemony Snicket, whose sequence of books for children, known collectively as “A Series Of Unfortunate Events,” have allegedly sold more than 48 million copies. An adjunct accordionist for the pop group The Magnetic Fields, Handler lives in San Francisco with his wife, the illustrator Lisa Brown, and a child.

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